Surfin' Safari
So I started at Dear Buster, reading this. Turns out that I'm not the only one who wonders about the search terms that people use to get to my blog. Take it away, Buster:
10. "Pictures of Mark Walberg Showing His Dick in Boogie Nights". It kills me when I see people who don't understand web search terminology....but if it helps, it was a prosthetic device....
So I replied:
10. Blame Ask Jeeves (which never worked for me). Perhaps some day a search engine will develop a true AI method of communicating with the searcher.
SEARCHER: Yo, where can I find some hot pix of that rapper/actor who used to dance in his underwear? Like, I really want a pic from that movie where he flashed his schlong.
SEARCH ENGINE: Do you mean Mark "Marky Mark" Wahlberg in "Boogie Nights"?
SEARCHER: Yeah, that sounds about right.
SEARCH ENGINE: I can show you some links, but if I were you I wouldn't bother. It was a prosthetic device.
SEARCHER: OK, how about that chick in The Incredibles? I love to watch a comic strip.
SEARCH ENGINE: Error 404, dude.
Kept on reading Buster, and found the following reply:
Alli Deluxe said...
I just ravished myself whilst reading this. I did however, refrain from hickies because I don't like incriminating evidence.
Which led me to surf to Tof Reknin Day and find a post about my hometown that had nothing to do with Bruce Springsteen:
So Mike and I went to see this movie called Sideways a few weeks ago in Ontario. Thats Cali, not Canada....[W]hen we got there we realized we'd an hour til the movie started, so we headed over to the Rainforest Cafe for a stiff drink, of which I partook easily. So at like 10, we head over to the theater where HE proceeds to nearly pass out....
I've been to that Rainforest Cafe, but didn't drink, and I've been to one of the two movie theaters in that area, but it was back when "The Prince of Egypt" was playing.
Anyway, I surfed on to a blog called RIP. Sample entry:
RIP Johnny Cash
He fell into a burning ring of fire. He went down down down and the flames rose higher. And he burned burned burned....in the ring of fire...the ring of fire....
...so does that mean he's in hell? : ( poor johnny.
Actually, Johnny didn't write the song; June did. Before she was married to Johnny. So the fire is in June's heart, as Rolling Stone indicates:
87
Ring of Fire
JOHNNY CASH
1963
Written by: June Carter, Merle Kilgore
Produced by: Don Law
Released: May '63 on Columbia
Charts: 13 weeks
Top spot: No. 17
Carter wrote this song while driving around aimlessly one night, worried about Cash's wildman ways -- and aware that she couldn't resist him. "There is no way to be in that kind of hell, no way to extinguish a flame that burns, burns, burns," she wrote. Not long after hearing June's sister Anita's take on the song, Cash had a dream that he was singing it with mariachi horns. Cash's version became one of his biggest hits, and his marriage to June four years later helped save his life.
Aside: Stan Ridgway used the horns again on his solo song "Piledriver." The link to Cash is obvious (emphasis mine):
Ridgway's tributes to country and western are many in his music. In interviews Ridgway has said he grew up listening to country and western music....Merle Travis's "Sixteen Tons"--made a hit by Tennessee Ernie Ford--has been a staple of his live shows...
Sorry for the interruption, but I just wanted to point out that my old song "Deeper in Debt" borrowed its title (and nothing else) from the song above.
...and while his one man show, rock & roll version of Rex Allen's "Foggy River" (written by Fred Rose), the B-side of the UK 7" "The Big Heat (Remix)," does not purposely try to obscure his country and western roots, it does reveal the kinds of demands his music puts on his listener. Ridgway expects those of us of his generation to know his sources; this is one of the risks his music always takes. One has to listen a long time, and hard, for instance, to hear "(Ghost) Riders in the Sky" in Ridgway's "Lonely Town," but it is in there, nonetheless.
I have alluded to Johnny Cash throughout this essay, and I'm referring here to his rendition of "(Ghost) Riders in the Sky" from the Silver album (1979). Evidence of Ridgway's admiration of Cash began with WOV, of course, in the band's rendition of "Ring of Fire." Cash, however, did not write the song; the songwriters of "Ring of Fire" are June Carter and Merle Kilgore. "Ring of Fire" was first recorded in 1962 by Anita Carter (as "(Love's) Ring of Fire" on Folk Songs Old and New), but the song failed to hit. According to legend, Johnny Cash had a dream in which he heard "Ring of Fire" using brass accompaniment, woke up and announced that he was going record "(Love's) Ring of Fire" using Mexican horns--atypical country instrumentation.
When WOV recorded "Ring of Fire" years ago, they dropped the horns. The Mexican horn riff from "Ring of Fire" returned virtually intact, however, years later when Ridgway recorded his marvellous "Piledriver" (on The Big Heat). And so when I say I hear "(Ghost) Riders in the Sky" in "Lonely Town," I mean, to be precise, that I hear Cash's rendition of "Ghost Riders" in Ridgway's "Lonely Town." In fact, I hear much of Cash's album Silver in Mosquitos, and I say this knowing that it is entirely possible that Ridgway has never heard Silver....
Before I return to my surfing safari, let me note that Silver is a nearly bluegrass album for Cash, a time when he stepped away from mariachi bands and rock bands and everything else and wallowed in Appalachia. This was the first album in which I heard the song "Muddy Waters," and many of the other songs are excellent.
Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, I was looking at the RIP blog. Then I surfed over to Shark for Brains. Like, read it.
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